Rory McIlroy refuses to run away with celebrity circus following US Open triumph at Congressional

Three days on, and it is standing room only in the Holywood clubhouse. Into
the glare of a hundred flashbulbs, Rory McIlroy is trying to remember all
the sporting totems who have sent their plaudits since last Sunday’s
spectacular US Open victory: Rafael Nadal, Greg Norman, Arnold Palmer. No
mention, you will note, of Tiger Woods.

Has he received any communication from Woods, the man McIlroy once idolised but to whom he is now more often compared? Negative. It sounds as if the two, despite their similarly explosive introductions to winning majors, are rarely in touch. “I don’t have his phone number. He sent a little thing to the press tent on Sunday, just to congratulate me, so that was nice of him.”

That “thing” would be a message, conveyed on Sunday by NBC anchor Dan Hicks, which read: “Heck of a performance. Congrats. Enjoy it.” Woods’ missives lack, dare we say it, the personal touch. At least he stopped short of announcing it on Twitter.

McIlroy delivered a resonant tweet himself upon landing back in Belfast: “I’m a golfer, not a football team.” That sentiment directly informs his self-deprecating attitude as he confronts his rapt Holywood audience. There cannot be many 22 year-olds who would not yelp for joy at seeing their friends, their distant cousins, even their secret admirers jostling up the stairs just to catch a view of them.

But upon encountering this madness, McIlroy is a little shy. It is a response to explain why he has flatly turned down any suggestions of open-top bus rides. “There was never any thought of doing anything like that,” he says.

“If in boxing, you win a world heavyweight title, there is only the one. There are four majors in golf a year, so it’s not as if this is going to be the last one. I hope it’s not! I have a lot more opportunities to win these things. I just want people to realise that.” Amid this clamour, rational thought tends to fly out of the nearest window.

McIlroy is genuinely surprised to learn that a local bakery has started producing buns with his image on the icing. He is even more shocked when a reporter, confronted with perhaps Northern Ireland’s most eligible man, asks if he is still single. Holly Sweeney, his girlfriend since school, raises her arm protectively at the back of the room.

Welcome to the celebrity circus, Rory. You had better become used to it. “I didn’t know this win would create quite as much of a stir as it has,” he concedes. “Yeah, there will be a lot more attention on me than there was previously. I just have to make sure that I stay the same as I have done since I turned pro, and even before that. It’s going to be tough. The demands on my time will be very hard. But I’m going to try my best to be the same Rory as I was when I turned pro in 2007.”

As always, it is a delicately crafted answer. McIlroy has faced inquisitions from the day he could walk, albeit at not quite this fever pitch.

Refreshingly, he has resolved to enjoy all the accoutrements that accompany his rise to golf’s major league. Rather than head straight to the next tournament, he will be in the Royal Box at Wimbledon on Tuesday — possibly indulging a tête-à-tête with Nadal — before heading to Hamburg next weekend for David Kaye’s heavyweight bout with Wladimir Klitschko.

McIlroy developed his love of boxing when he watched Ricky Hatton’s defeat to Manny Pacquiao in Las Vegas. He was ringside again for Haye’s demolition of Audley Harrison last November and, aptly for one so composed at the business end of a US Open, fed off the intensity of the occasion. “I’ve never been in an atmosphere like it,” he says.

In his rare spells of down-time, McIlroy intends to watch a few of his Congressional highlights. He can heed, too, the wise words imparted to him by Norman, his Australian confidant and, in another life, a fellow victim of the Masters collapse. “He told me, ‘Keep doing whatever you’re doing. Don’t stop here.’ He was so happy for me.”